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Which Organizations Have Standardized on Mozilla?
andy brunetto asks: " We are investigating email clients to deploy as our "standard" at the college where I work. I'm trying to find out who is using Mozilla for their email. When I say "who" I mean organizationally, as I realize 99% of us geeks already use it. What organizations out there are rolling out Mozilla as their standard web and/or email client, and why? Yes, we are considering using Thunderbird, once it is final. Thanks!" Hopefully this will make companies realize that the Internet isn't comprised of just IE users.
In the corporate environments where I've been working, Microsoft servers, browsers and email remain the status quo.
As a web developer, I use Mozilla because it's stricter about standards, and pages that render well in Moz almost always look the same in IE, while the reverse isn't true. One coworker gives me a (humorous) hard time about my refusal to use Microsoft FrontPage or IE when our company is unquestionably "a Microsoft shop".
Seems like there's no businesses -- certainly not incorporated ones -- want to hire experts in free software like Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL and Mozilla when 2kServer, IIS, SQL Server and IE are what all the other big companies are using first. Mozilla's got an uphill battle, and it knows it.
"as I realize 99% of us geeks already use [Mozilla]."
Sorry kid, but where I come from, 99% of people use Outlook and/or Exchange. Exchange or not, Outlook 2000 and XP are very capable email clients, and the easy calendar/contact integration and Palm synchronization make them the real winners. (By the way, there is a patch for Outlook 2000 that disallows opening of any harmful attachments. This comes standard with Outlook XP. I switched from Eudora two years ago and I've never even been able to open a virus-laden attachment, let alone send one, as it asks for confirmation when a program tries to automatically send something.) I browse the web using Mozilla (I'm using it right now), but Outlook wins hands-down on email.
If you want to standardize, standardize on the server side, not the client. Most organizations I have worked at standardized on IMAP (whether they did so through Exchange or another IMAP server.) IMAP has the advantage of keeping everyone's email on the server so people can access it through the web, at multiple computers, etc. The disadvantage, of course, is disk space -- you're going to need at least 10MB per account, and preferably 25MB or more, which quickly adds up. Plus, you're going to need to find a reliable way to back that up, and tape drives are expensive.
My recommendation is to standardize on IMAP, set up some webmail, and have some HOWTOs for several email clients. This being a college, you're going to find that most everyone will be using Outlook Express. Include HOWTOs for Mozilla, OE, Outlook, and whatever you choose as your webmail solution (there will be people who use the webmail exclusively.) As long as you set the standard on the server side, I don't think it's necessary to set a standard client -- just a recommended one. If you want that to be Mozilla, so be it, but understand that not everyone is going to want to use it.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Here's the easiest way to "eliminate" IE for 99% of users:
1) Set Mozilla as the default browser. (Just make sure it doesn't also take over GIF, JPEG, etc. files as well... mine did that here at home and I can't seem to wrench it back from Moz using Tools/Folder Options, but that's another story.)
2) Remove IE from the start menu and quick launch bar.
3) Profit!
Now, it's true that "iexplore.exe" will still be around somewhere, and if people really want to use IE, they can find it. But you know what -- if they're that hell-bent on using IE, let them use it. Most of your employees, however, will be just as happy with Mozilla as their default browser, so you shouldn't hear many complaints.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Real geeks use Mutt.
:wq
Not to be a smart ass (well, sorta), but what about IE? IE is at least as "unstable" as you report Mozilla to be. In my case, I've found that IE crashes far more than Mozilla does, yet I use Mozilla more than IE. I don't think that this is a criteria that many will be using to judge browsers, as both are relatively stable.
:) and the lock-in you get with MS Exchange, but the huge drawback being the fact that it is so easily comprimised by viruses and worms and whatnot.
:(
Seriously though, how many open crash bugs are left? It seems that the one you point out is somewhat complicated to duplicate, involves Mozilla interacting with Java (something that seems to cause most browsers some consternation), and is not an issue for 99% of the web-browsing public.
Not that this has anything to do with Mozilla Mail in the least. A comparison between Outlook and Mozilla Mail or Thunderbird might be a little more on topic. It seems to me that all three are, like their browser counterparts, fairly stable, and offer a fair to decent email experience.
I find that a big draw for Outlook would be it's well designed UI (seriously, it's about the only thing it's good for!
Sadly most people seem to be insanely ignorant of this point, and just keep chugging along, happily flooding the internet with Klez, Bugbear, and Sobig.
I think that the great feature that could attract people to the Mozilla team's offerings is the built-in Bayesian spam filter! Much like pop-up blocking, and, to a lesser extent, tabbed browsing, this is the kind of feature you can mention to somebody, and they go "Oh, hey... that's pretty cool!" It's definitely something that people need, given how much spam is out there, but if people don't know about it, then they will content to wallow in mediocrity.
-Colin
I've noticed that because MS has integrated IE with the OS, when IE crashes it often brings down my whole system, requiring a reboot, but when Moz crashes the system is fine and I just need to reload Moz and keep going.
Personally I find IE crashes much more often than Moz, but even if they both crashed with the same frequency it's a much bigger hassle to recover from an IE crash.
The general policy of sending people e-mail that is mean to be "run" is a dumb, dumb idea in the first place, and that we can blame on Outlook. The fact is that those "idiot" users are just doing what the software has trained them to do - click on attachments to view them in whatever application is configured for them to run in. See a word doc - click on it to view it. See an Excel spreadsheet - click on it to view it. See a zip file - click on it to view it. See a virus program - click on it to view it - Oops!
The idea of using executable content (which is what a word document or spreadsheet really *are*) as a normal, everyday typical way to operate your business is what leads people to run things they see in their e-mail without thinking. They aren't thinking "I'm running this file". They are thinking "I'm looking at this file."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I'm trying to find out who is using Mozilla for their email. When I say "who" I mean organizationally, as I realize 99% of us geeks already use it.
This is 100% wrong and I don't understand why nobody wrote it yet. If 99% geeks use Mozilla for mail, then who uses Mutt, Pine, or Evolution? Mainstream people?